Entertainment Reel

If you’re going to enter a karaoke contest show, and you know that the show was created by none other than ‘Jackass’ star, Steve-O, you must expect that you’re going to sustain a couple of injuries at some point!

Steve-O and both production companies producing the new reality TV show ‘Killer Karaoke’ for TruTV -where contestants compete in a sing off while they are distracted by various diversions to throw them off course (such as have things hurled at them) - are being sued by a contestant who was injured during the taping of the upcoming series.

Susanne Ohman suffered numerous injuries back in October after she attempted to descend the staircase from the stage where she had been singing, and took a nasty spill!

On the day of the taping, according to Ohman, the singers were being doused with some sort of liquid, and over the course of 12-hours, the studio floor had become dangerously wet.

When Ohman finished her round, she went to leave the stage and slipped down the stairs, resulting in a massive amount of injuries to her lower body!

Did the production crew not think it would be wise to mop the mess up after?

"As a direct result of said negligence, Plaintiff fractured and damaged her tibia, patella, ligaments, knee, leg, bones, and injured her muscles, bone, circulatory system and body," stated the suit.

Ohman is seeking medical costs, damages for emotional distress, mental suffering and anguish, loss of earnings, and the cost of the suit itself!

Ouch!

Steve-O nor the production team has yet to make any comment on the lawsuit.

Drunk ‘Wheel of Fortune’

I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising that back in the early days of the popular game show ‘Wheel of Fortune’, host Pat Sajak and his lovely co-host Vanna White used to knock back a few between tapings of the show!

"When I first started and was much younger and could tolerate those things,” said Sajak in an interview with ESPN2.
Sajak began hosting the show back in 1981, and White joined a year later. The two began taking lengthy dinner breaks before the show’s tapings in the evenings.

The hosts would go across the street from the studio to a Mexican restaurant, and start tossing back Margaritas during dinner.

"Vanna and I would go across and have two or three or six and then come and do the last shows and have trouble recognizing the alphabet," said Sajak, now 65. "They're really good tapes to get a hold of."

"No one said anything, so I guess I did OK,” Sajak laughed.

Monty Python Gang Reunite

Terry Jones looks to be getting the Monty Python gang back together for a science-fiction comedy called ‘Absolutely Anything’!

It has been confirmed that John Cleese, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin will be joining Jones (who will be directing) in a film that will have the three playing aliens, and possibly several other characters!

In addition to this hilarious undertaking, funny man Robin Williams is in talks to play a dog and pompous French man in the movie!

Eric Idol may join the project as well, but it has yet to be finalized.

Python fans be warned though, as according to Jones, this will NOT be a Python film.

“It's a different thing. It's not really that we're all getting back together.”

The movie will centre on a group of aliens who grant unlimited powers to a human. The human though is unable to deal with his new abilities, and ignoring the advice of his talking dog, causes chaos on earth!

Brilliant!

Filming is expected to begin this upcoming summer in the UK with a budget of $15 to $20 million.

Lockout

Finally, Guy Pierce gets to try his hand at an action flick, and in the trailer for ‘Lockout’, he looks to be having a lot of fun with it!

Pierce plays a government agent who is in a bit of trouble.

The US government thinks that he’s been spying on them, so to make it up to them he must rescue the President’s daughter, who’s trapped in a maximum security prison where the prisoners have all revolted and are keeping her captive.

There is talk that the photographer and another paparazzo might have caught the incident on video, but nothing has surfaced as of yet. The nanny has reportedly filed a suit for unspecified damages against Lohan.

There is still no word on whether the nanny had any injuries from the accident or why she didn’t file the lawsuit or any police charges at the time.

Lohan is also currently being sued by a guy claiming she had backed out of a dot com business deal with him because he had discovered that she had ties to the death of Osama Bin Laden.

The man – who is clearly off his rocker – is also alleging that Lohan is a “high-end prostitute.”

Glenn Close Grew up in Cult

It is surprising to learn sometimes how some of today’s stars grew up, and the struggles they endured to get where they are!

Glenn Close, who is up for a Best Actress Oscar for her role as a cross-dressing butler in ‘Albert Nobbs’ - a film in which she also co-wrote and produced - fessed up about growing up in a cult for over 15 years!

At the age of 7, Close’s family decided to join the conservative organization called Moral Re-Armament, in which she lived until the age of 22, after touring with the musical group ‘Up With People’ – also part of the organization – before deciding to go to college.

"It was a cult where everyone was told to think alike, and that's devastating." Close said.

She does attribute her success however to her time spent there, saying that it certainly helped her to become a better performer.

Close, now a 64 year-old, continued with, “but it also gives you a huge sense of looking from the outside in, and I think that in many ways that has been very good as an actor, because you are somebody who is asked to go into a character.... I always felt that I was held together with Scotch tape and paper clips and, as an actor, that's good."

Actress Rose McGowan also admitted recently that she grew up as a member of a cult, living nine years in Italy with her father in the ‘Children of God’ Sect. Her family eventually escaped.

Close will be going up against such nominees as Meryl Streep for ‘The Iron Lady’, Michelle Williams for ‘My Week with Marilyn’, Viola Davis for ‘The Help’, and Rooney Mara for ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ for the Best Actress title.

The Academy Awards will air on Sunday February 26th.

The ‘Hamm-O-Gram’

Don’t know what to get that sad, lonely, single girlfriend for Valentine’s this year?

How about the gift that keeps on giving; the ‘Hamm-O-Gram’, a telegram that includes a picture of Jon Hamm, telling her how much he loves her!

For only 5 bucks, you can send your friend a personalized love note from the hot, manly actor himself (well, I’m sure it’s not actually from him), and a picture of him to hang on her wall, to dream of the day when that tall, dark, handsome stranger will waltz into her life and sweep her away!

As of Tuesday, Facebook has been informing people that they have a week to clean up their profiles. I myself have not, as of yet, received this message, but I know it’s coming as the social site will be rolling out the requirement over the next few weeks.

Personally, I’m afraid to switch!

I’m not a huge fan of having my face splashed banner-style across my main page (disregard the banner on this column). I’m also not a huge fan of people being able to go back into my older posts easily.

As of now, you have to keep hitting ‘older posts’, scrolling through hundreds, if not thousands of past items till you find the one you want – I’m happy with that, as most people don’t care enough, especially new friends, to go that far back.

Why fix it if it ain’t broken?

Even if you haven’t logged in to the site in quite some time, you will be automatically switched.

Timeline doesn’t really expose anything that wasn’t already available, and in all honesty, if you don’t want people to see something, then you should have never posted in the first place.

It just means certain things will be more visible, or that the chance of something you posted back in 2007 could come back to haunt you!

If you are like me, and haven’t switched to Timeline yet due to fear of what may lie beneath or due to sheer laziness, here are a few tips to help clean up your profile before Facebook accidentally airs some dirty laundry:

You can change privacy settings on individual items to control who has access. You may want to slim down on the embarrassing photos or delete some posts completely. I myself have a habit of already removing tags of silly photos that others have taken!

You can change the date on a post – this one I found interesting! For example, if you took a few months to post photos from a trip you took, you can move them to appear with other posts from the time you took that trip. You can also add where you were, retroactively using a location feature that Facebook hadn't offered before.

For major pictures or posts, you can click on a star to show them more prominently on your page. You can also hide the posts you don’t want to be front and centre.

If you don’t really want to start going through all your posts, start with the oldest ones first, as those are the ones you probably need to be more concerned about. I think a ‘delete all posts after this date’ function might have been appropriate here!

If you click on the Activity Log, you can see all of your posts at a glance and make changes to them one by one – which feels like a HUGE hassle! I’d start with opening two tabs; one for the older posts and one with the new Timeline so you can see what you are doing.

No matter which way you look at though, this all feels like a big pain in my behind!

Thank-you Facebook for being so *user friendly*! I know change is good, but why does it need to be so drastic?

Baby-Steps!

Dirty ‘Family Feud’

‘Name something an airline pilot might be holding during a long flight’…

The rules for ‘Family Feud’ are that an answer goes up on the board if more than two people surveyed say it.

Apparently three out of the 100 people asked had their minds in a completely different, um, area!
Watch the reaction of some of the contestants when answer number six pops up on the board!

I am actually amazed that they didn’t scrap the question.

Kudos must go to the producers, because this is hilarious!

Darling Companion

Movies about animals are not really my thing, but with this amazing cast, I might have to step out of my box a little!
In this film by Lawrence Kasdan - who directed such classics as ‘The Big Chill’, ‘Silverado’, and a slew of other films -

Diane Keaton heads an all-star cast about a family whose dog has run off, and the newfound relationship that is built between a husband and wife while searching for her ‘Darling Companion’.

When Beth (Keaton) brings home a stray dog that she found on the freeway (which she affectionately names him), her husband Joseph (Kevin Kline) is completely against it, however with the house empty of children and her husband at work all the time, Beth insists on keeping him for company.

When the couple takes a trip up to their vacation home in the Rocky Mountains for a wedding, Joseph leaves the dog unattended while talking on the phone, letting Freeway take a run for it!

Beth, now totally distraught, enlists the help of the guests who have stayed behind and a mysterious young woman who ‘feels’ that the dog is still alive.

The film also stars Dianne Wiest, Richard Jenkins and Sam Shepard as the remaining guests.

Julian Assange, Cyber-transparency activist and creator of ‘WikiLeaks’, is launching what he calls a “new brand of talk show”, built around the theme of “the world of tomorrow.”

Assange has yet to disclose any of his guests, but promises viewers that it will involve plenty of controversy!

In a statement posted on Monday, the WikiLeaks site said that “iconoclasts, visionaries and power insiders” would be brought on the show so that Assange could challenge them on their vision of world affairs, as well as have them share their ideas on “how to secure a better future.”

“Through this series I will explore the possibilities for our future in conversations with those who are shaping it. Are we heading towards utopia, or dystopia and how we can set our paths? This is an exciting opportunity to discuss the vision of my guests in a new style of show that examines their philosophies and struggles in a deeper and clearer way than has been done before,” said Assange.

The series is said to begin airing in mid-March, although there are some questions regarding how it will be produced and who will distribute the talk show.

It is even unclear if Assange himself will be able to host the show, as he is currently fighting extradition to Sweden for sex crime allegations, and US officials are still deciding on whether to charge him based on his ‘leaks’ of US Government classified documents.

To get a good understanding on what Assange may or may not be charged for, click here for an interesting article that debates whether or not he should be considered a journalist.

Jim Carrey’s Daughter Auditions on ‘Idol’

The daughter of Canadian funny man, Jim Carrey, won her golden ticket on Sunday night to ‘American Idol’s’ Hollywood round!

Jane, the 24-year old kid of Carrey, auditioned in San Diego for the singing competition in front of judges Jennifer Lopez, Steven Tyler and Randy Jackson.

When Jane stepped into the audition room, J.Lo. was slightly stunned; having remembered Jane from back when Lopez and Carrey Sr. worked together on ‘In Living Color’ in the 90’s - Lopez was a ‘Fly Girl’ at the time.

“I remember you when you were little,” Lopez said.

“I think I was two,” replied Jane before she launched into a rendition of Bonnie Raitt’s ‘Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About.’

This is a fantastic step for Jane, who is currently working at an LA restaurant as a waitress, taking care of her 2-year old son Jackson, and is leading her own alternative rock quartet called, ‘The Jane Carrey Band.’

Jane – whose actual first name is Erin, but has gone by her middle name since she was little – studied jazz at the Crossroads School for the Arts & Sciences in California.

In her pre-audition tape that she shot for ‘Idol’, Jane said “It’s difficult growing up in a shadow trying to find your way.”
Well, thanks to judges at ‘Idol’, Jane may well be on her path!

The judges also gave Jane a few tips before she left the audition room to call her dad: to work on her volume and to keep her eyes open so as to connect with the audience for her next performance… in Hollywood!

Jeff, Who Lives at Home

Finally a film that gives Jason Segel a chance to show off his acting chops!

Segel has made a career out of playing the role of an emotionally stunted man-child, and his child-like energy has taken him far in his many roles from ‘How I Met Your Mother’, ‘I Love You Man’, and his breakout role in ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’.

So who better to play the part of a pot-smoking slacker, who lives at home with his mother (Susan Sarandon), and looks for signs of which path he should follow to discover his destiny?

Ed Helms plays Segel’s brother, who has been given the task by mom to help his bro move forward with his life; that is until he discovers that his wife (Pam Greer) is cheating on him!

The two brothers decide to follow the wife and confront her on the affair, discovering new things about each other along the way.

With certification in Film & Media Production, Kathrine worked in the B.C. film industry in various capacities. After gaining experience in casting, production and location scouting, Kathrine moved home to the sunny Okanagan to be closer to family and friends.

Though no longer behind the scenes, Kathrine still enjoys all things entertainment from movies, television and local music and entertainment.